


i'm done with my dying

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s03e10 Maveth, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 17:18:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6385321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The days stretch out, silent and empty.</p>
<p>Jemma survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm done with my dying

**Author's Note:**

> *falls to knees and gives thanks that this stupid fic is FINALLY DONE*

The days stretch out, silent and empty.

Jemma survives. The solitude is her greatest threat, and she combats it by exploring as far as she dares. Sometimes she ventures farther than is wise—much, much farther—but she always makes it safely home. Whether that’s down to good fortune or…something else, she prefers not to speculate.

There are cities in the no-fly zone—great, crumbling ruins of what must have once been a thriving civilization. Curiosity (her oldest vice) makes her bold; on her very first visit, she climbs too far, falls through a long-rusted floor, and breaks her arm. It’s a simple break—no blood, thank goodness, just _pain_ —but enough to remind her of the need for caution.

The sandstorm chases her all the way home.

She doesn’t go back.

The days bleed together. It’s harder to keep track, now, and soon enough she stops trying. It’s too depressing.

So she focuses on survival. Cautious exploration, hiding, scavenging—and sleep.

She does a lot of sleeping.

And sometimes, when the quiet presses down on her, when the crushing weight of loneliness becomes too much to bear, she wraps herself in the blanket from Will’s bed and breathes.

“He’s alive,” she whispers, just to hear it. “He’s alive.”

_He’s alive_ , _he’s alive_ , _he’s alive_ ; her endless mantra of reassurance. It helps to remind herself. She might _feel_ like the only person in the universe, but she’s not.

She heard Fitz, that day, heard him calling her name. He’s the one who opened the portal that Will made it through.

Fitz will take care of Will for her.

 

 

 

Her arm heals slowly. She has no plaster and, worse, no painkillers; she makes do with a splint and tries to move as little as possible. Too often, she wakes in agony, having rolled onto it in the middle of the night—or the middle of her sleep, rather; there’s no day or night on this horrible planet—but try as she might, she can’t find a position that will protect it.

There’s nothing she can do except endure, and so she does.

One night, weeks or months or years after Will’s escape, she dreams of him. That’s hardly new; the vast majority of her pleasant dreams (as opposed to her _less_ pleasant dreams, which she does her best not to remember) are about him.

What makes it noteworthy is that this time, he’s still there when she wakes.

She opens her eyes and he’s leaning over her, one hand solid and firm on her good arm. She smiles reflexively, delighted by his presence, before she realizes the oddity of it. He can’t be here; he’s home on Earth, with her team, not with her.

Well, it was really only a matter of time, wasn’t it, before the hallucinations set in. At least she’s hallucinating him in good health—and remarkably clean.

It’s very strange, though, to see him in a t-shirt. She opens her mouth to tell him so, but he speaks before she has the chance.

“I’m not gonna hit you,” he says, and pinches her.

“ _Ow_ ,” she says, pointedly, more out of annoyance than because it truly hurts, although it does, a little, which—

Oh.

_Oh_.

She throws herself at him (jarring her broken arm terribly, but she can’t care about that, not now) at once, and he moves with her, somehow managing to turn her lunge into a sideways roll onto the other half of the bed. How he accomplishes that, she couldn’t say and doesn’t care; all that matters is that he’s solid and warm and _real_ beneath her.

“Hello,” she says, giddy and breathless, and kisses him before he can answer.

His hand sinks into her hair; as the kiss draws out, he matches every bit of passion and longing that she puts into it. She missed him— _so much_ —and now that he’s here, all she wants is to hold on and never let go. In fact, she thinks she will. It’s not as though there’s anything to stop—

“Well. Isn’t this touching.”

The unexpected voice—straight out of one of her nightmares—startles her away from Will. Her eyes confirm what her ears have told her, and instinct has her scrambling backwards onto the other cot. If not for Will catching her good wrist as he sits up, she likely would have fallen right off.

“It’s okay,” Will soothes, thumb sweeping over her pulse. “Jemma—”

“What,” she demands, “is _he_ doing here?”

She’s trembling all over, but her voice is steady. Quite an accomplishment when her gaze is locked with Grant Ward’s.

“Now, Simmons,” he tsks, every inch the smug bastard she remembers. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

“You are _not_ my friend,” she snaps, and then—as her mind finally catches up with her—looks hurriedly to Will. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

She folds her knees under her to lean into him, searching for any signs of injury or distress, only to find herself pulled back into his lap.

“It’s okay,” he says again, holding her close. She can’t help but cling back, despite their horrible audience, and is slightly surprised by the scent that meets her as she presses her face into his shoulder. Something like pine trees, which—oh, of course. The generic soap that’s kept stocked at the Playground. She supposes she missed out on the shower/eat/sleep plan. “ _I’m_ not hurt.”

The stress on the first word makes her tense. “Who is?”

“Besides you, you mean?” he asks, and frowns down at her splinted arm as she sits back. His clear concern lifts her heart—which is ridiculous, of _course_ he’s concerned—but it falls just as quickly, because the frown becomes an apologetic grimace when he meets her eyes. “Fitz.”

Oh, no.

“What—what happened to Fitz?” she asks, heart in her throat.

Is it possible Will’s rescue from this hellhole didn’t go as smoothly as she thought? If Fitz was hurt because of _her_ …

“Ask him,” Will says darkly, frowning at Ward.

Visions of the condition Ward left Bobbi in sear through her mind, and her stomach turns. Ward’s look of offense does nothing to comfort her.

“Hey,” he says, “if you’re upset about what happened to Fitz, take it up with Coulson. If he hadn’t threatened my brother—”

“What did you do to Fitz?” she demands. “If you’ve hurt him—”

“What?” Ward scoffs. “You gonna try to kill me again?”

She’s sorely tempted, but there’s no way she could manage it without leaving Will’s lap, and she’s simply not ready for that. After God only knows how long spent separated, she’s not about to pull herself away from him for the sake of _Grant Ward_. Revenge for whatever horrors have been visited upon Fitz will have to wait.

For the moment, she looks to Will for answers. “What’s going on? Why is he here?”

“HYDRA,” he says succinctly. His hands have come to rest on her hips, and he squeezes them gently as the word stills her. “Apparently they worship _It_.”

Just the idea of such—such _delusion_ is enough to make her shiver. She cuddles closer to Will, uncaring if it diminishes the effectiveness of the glare she levels on Ward.

“And I thought you couldn’t sink any lower,” she says. “Once again, you disappoint me.”

He smiles pleasantly. “Missed you too, Simmons.”

“I’m sorry,” Will says, drawing her attention back to him. “I didn’t wanna bring him here, but—I didn’t exactly have a choice.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” she assures him at once. There’s no telling what HYDRA would have done to him if he’d refused to cooperate; she doesn’t even want to imagine it.

“Yes, I do,” he says gravely. “You know we can’t let It get back to Earth.”

“Will…”

“I’m sorry,” he says over her. “I’ve been looking for a way to bring you home for _months_ , but—” His breath shudders out of him. “We can’t go home. We can’t risk it.”

“What,” Ward says before she can speak, “you think refusing to leave will keep me from taking my supreme leader home?” He scoffs. “Hate to break it to you, spaceman, but I’m not too fussed about whether you two make it back.”

“Yeah, good luck finding that portal in time without me,” Will tells him, and Ward’s expression darkens.

Jemma cups Will’s cheek in her good hand and, with gentle pressure, turns his face towards her.

“You have _nothing_ to apologize for,” she repeats firmly. “Not for bringing him here, and certainly not for wanting to protect Earth from It.”

He turns his head slightly to kiss her palm, though he keeps his eyes locked on hers. “But?”

She inhales slowly, glancing briefly at Ward. Given her druthers, she’d prefer not to admit this in front of him, but he’s unlikely to step politely out and give them a moment of privacy. And in any case, he’s going to learn it sooner or later.

“ _But_ it isn’t necessary,” she says. “It’s…gone.”

“Gone?” Will echoes, eyes widening.

“ _Gone_?” Ward demands. “What do you mean _gone_?”

“I mean gone,” she says impatiently. “It died, or disappeared, or…something.”

“How?” Will breathes. “ _When_?”

Ward’s eyes burn through her, sending an unpleasant itch up her spine. She holds tight to Will, doing her best to ignore their unwelcome guest.

“The day you escaped,” she says. “I tried to run, but it caught up with me. It tried to—” She flounders for a moment, searching for the appropriate terminology. “Well, to possess me, I suppose.”

Will stares. “To—”

“It almost managed it,” she admits, because—well, it needs addressing. “It took me over, and then…”

“Then what?” he asks, hands tightening painfully on her hips—as though to protect her from the very idea of possession.

“It…hm.” She bites her lip, considering her words. “A few years ago, I was exposed to an alien virus, the remnants of which are still in my blood. I believe the virus killed It.”

“Oh, come on,” Ward says, utterly ruining her success in ignoring him. “You expect me to believe an ancient Inhuman fell to a Chitauri _cold_?”

She gives him her best quelling look, which—naturally—has no effect, and then returns her attention to Will.

“I can’t say for certain, of course,” she says, “as I am completely lacking in any kind of lab or equipment at all, but there was an—electrical component, shall we say? To the virus, and I felt something very similar right before the creature…disappeared.”

Just mentioning it is enough to bring on a phantom sensation of the buzzing under her skin, and she shifts in Will’s lap uncomfortably. Even years on, the Chitauri virus is something about which she has frequent nightmares, and experiencing that awful electricity _again_ , on top of those horrible few seconds of having no control over her own body—

Well. Little wonder she’s plagued by nightmares.

Will is watching her, and her heart aches with the painful struggle between hope and disbelief playing out on his face. He’d like to believe her, of course, but it’s not surprising that he finds it difficult, after _fourteen years_ of being plagued by It.

Ward, on the other hand, faces no such struggle. “You’re lying.”

“No one asked you,” Will snaps at him. Then he returns his attention to Jemma, the glare he aimed at Ward fading into a grimace. “But…are you sure? Maybe It just…left you. There was a sandstorm while we were coming here, so…”

She worries at her lip, fighting herself for a long moment. She can convince them, she’s certain, but the method—does she want to expose this information to Ward?

…Can she afford _not_ to?

Will mentioned getting to a portal in time, which means they’re on a deadline. And she has no trouble at all believing that Ward would keep them here—stranding himself on this planet along with them—out of spite, simply because he believes she’s attempting to mislead him.

She has been stuck here for too bloody long to let _Grant Ward_ ruin her best chance of getting home.

“I’m positive,” she says and, with regret, slides out of Will’s lap. She doesn’t want to do this on top of him—and, though she’s done her best not to think it, there’s a decent chance he won’t _want_ her there once he sees what she can do. “You see, there’s—something else.”

Will leans towards her, while Ward—clearly made wary by her change in tone—rests a hand pointedly on the gun at his hip. She turns away from them both, then holds her good hand out, palm forward, and _reaches_.

“Jem—”

Her name ends on a strangled noise as the sand in the corners of the room (the sand on this planet is just like the sand on Earth; it gets _everywhere_ , no matter how much effort she puts to keeping it out of her home) picks itself up off the floor and rushes towards her. It swirls as it goes, trying to become a storm—though there’s not enough of it to be effective—and for a moment, she almost forgets her company as she reaches farther and farther and—

Too far.

Wind screams its way past the top of the cave, shattering her concentration like so much glass. The sand before her falls to the ground, lifeless, but she can feel the sandstorm she’s inadvertently started continue to rage outside.

That…will make things difficult.

Of course, things aren’t entirely pleasant _inside_ , either. She lowers her hand slowly, terribly conscious of the awful blankness on Will’s face—and the surprised pleasure on Ward’s.

“You took his power?” he asks, plainly fascinated.

“I didn’t mean to,” she says, more to Will than to him. “After It was gone, the power was just—there. I can’t control it very well at all.”

Will only stares.

There’s a long and very horrible moment of silence as Ward and Will both simply _look_ at her; Ward with worrying fascination and Will with—something else. She doesn’t know what.

Tears sting at her eyes, and she forces them quickly away—though not quickly enough to prevent Will seeing them. His expression softens, remaining unreadable but becoming much less stiff.

The silence drags on.

“So,” Ward says eventually, and claps his hands. “Our leader’s dead. Very sad. Too late to do anything about it now, though. Might as well go home.”

There’s still something very unsettling in the way he’s looking at her, and she shifts closer to Will before she can stop herself. He’s still for a moment, then turns, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so he can sit comfortably beside her.

The horrible vise around her heart loosens at the change.

Even as he rests his hand on her thigh, however (presumably in lieu of taking her hand, since he’s sat beside her bad arm), his attention is on Ward.

“Just like that?” he asks skeptically.

“Of course,” Ward says, all wide-eyed innocence. “I don’t wanna be stuck here any more than the two of you do. It’s a bummer that I’m going home empty-handed, but it’s better than not going home at all.”

“Uh-huh.”

Appearing unbothered by Will’s disbelief, Ward looks again to Jemma. “That sandstorm sounds pretty bad—and the first one wasn’t a picnic, either. Any chance you can get rid of it?”

She shakes her head.

“Even if I were inclined to do you any favors, which I’m _not_ ,” she says, gritting her teeth in frustration when the venom in her voice only makes him smile, “no, I can’t. As I said, can’t control the power very well—and that’s on the small scale. Actual sandstorms are nearly impossible to influence.”

“Nearly impossible?” Will asks, squeezing her thigh, and the fondness in his wry smile goes a long way to lightening her heart. “Since when has that been enough to stop you?”

“Well.” How can she hope to resist the way he’s looking at her? (Not that she particularly _wants_ to resist him. She just doesn’t want to disappoint him.) “I suppose it’s worth a try.”

“That’s the spirit,” Ward encourages, and she closes her eyes on the interest in his.

Reaching out, she can feel the sand swirling above them, tossed about in a wild wind that delights to stir the surface of the planet. She knows the science behind wind—behind sandstorms—but it doesn’t apply here at all. Her power follows no reasonable patterns or rules and, in fact, _breaks_ several laws of physics.

Which isn’t to say it’s _not_ scientific. It is _certainly_ not magic. It’s simply a sort of science that the people of Earth have not yet discovered or studied, that’s all. Once she’s home, she can experiment—quantify it—and determine the process by which it works.

But that’s for later. For now…

She thinks calm thoughts, quiet thoughts, pictures the sand becoming still and tranquil, a waterless ocean spreading out across the horizon…pictures the wind slowing, gentling, to a slight breeze. She can feel them fighting her, sand and wind both, wanting to stay in motion, to stay free—but Will is beside her, and to have him here after she’s longed for him so gives her a new strength.

She reaches and pulls and slowly, but surely, the storm lessens. The wind refuses to be stilled, but she forces it to slow, to calm. Sand falls from the air; it will dance along the surface, stinging at their ankles, but shouldn’t impede their vision or their progress.

Smiling with success, she lets go.

When she pulls back into herself, she finds she’s out of breath and shaking from exertion. She’s in Will’s lap again, and her racing heart twists at the worry in his frown as he brushes her hair away from her sweat-dampened temples.

“I’m all right,” she promises.

“You sure?” he asks, cupping the side of her neck in what, knowing him, is probably an attempt to be subtle about checking her pulse.

“Positive,” she says—though she isn’t, quite. She’s feeling a touch unsteady. “That was simply…very intense. However, I’m happy to report that the sandstorm has died down.”

“Oh, good,” Ward says brightly. “Knew you could do it. Let’s get going, then.”

Will gives him a dirty look, even as his hold on Jemma tightens.

“Are you gonna be okay to make it to the portal?” he asks her. “It’s in the no-fly zone.”

Honestly, she’s not sure she can even walk, let alone cross that far a distance—but she will. She _must._ She absolutely refuses to spend a single moment more than necessary on this horrible planet.

“I can make it,” she says, and—to prove it—slides off his lap to stand. She wavers a little as her head spins, but manages to keep her feet well enough. “See? Right as rain.”

He makes a face at her, knowing and fondly exasperated—so familiar she could cry—but doesn’t call her on her little fib.

Not directly, at least. “Just…let me know if you need a break on the way, okay? You saved us a lot of time getting rid of that sandstorm; we can afford to take it slow.”

He’s so earnest and worried for her—so _Will_ —that she can’t resist the urge to kiss him, even though bending to do so unbalances her such that she nearly ends up falling right back into his lap. He manages to steady her, though, and his hands remain firmly on her arms as he stands.

“Oh, sure,” he grouses, “you’re _fine_.”

She’ll admit that her unsteadiness hardly makes a compelling point, but… “I stopped a _sandstorm_ , remember? I can handle a little hike.”

Will looks upward, as though beseeching some higher power for patience. “Jemma—”

“She says she’s fine,” Ward interrupts, giving her a once-over that is _decidedly_ non-clinical. “And she looks it, too. Let’s just _go_ already.”

Will continues to hesitate.

“We could always just leave you here,” Ward says mildly, and unholsters his gun. “Wouldn’t bother me at all.”

Though his jaw tightens, Will doesn’t protest any further; he only nods once, sharply. Jemma frowns. After fourteen years spent fighting It for his life and sanity both, Will isn’t someone easily cowed. That he buckles so easily in the face of such a slight threat—and, now that she thinks on it, that he actually brought Ward here in the _first_ place, rather than taking him out somehow on the way—suggests there’s something else at work here, something she hasn’t been told.

Ward’s smug smile bears that up, and Jemma longs desperately for a splinter bomb.

Having managed to harness the power effectively enough to diminish the sandstorm, though, she’s feeling optimistic. Perhaps she can master Its powers of mental influence in time to cause Ward to wander off the edge of a cliff on the way to the portal?

**Author's Note:**

> Note that I started this immediately after watching the midseason finale, so Hive's powers are, obviously, not in line with 3B canon. No skin dissolving into sand here!


End file.
